Towers on London's skyline looking east (© London Intelligence) |
The Shard.
Strata.
‘Gherkin.’
‘Cheesegrater.’
‘Scalpel.’
The ‘Walkie Talkie.’
‘Urban design professionals’ debate whether London
needs even more tall buildings.
Paul Coleman reports.
Towers of London – skyscraping the barrel?
Billboard advert at entrance to Strata Tower, Elephant and Castle, south London ©London Intelligence 2014 |
London’s skyline might include up to 300
skyscrapers by 2024, according to some estimates, writes Paul Coleman.
By the summer of 2014, over 200 tall buildings have
already received
approval or are in the planning pipeline.
On Monday 2 June, several hundred people, including
dozens of architects, fill the stalls inside Holborn’s Peacock Theatre to
debate whether London really needs more tall office and residential buildings.
‘Urban design professional’ Sarah Gaventa, once of
the Elephant and Castle Community Forum and a Barbican resident, chairs
the London Festival of Architecture debate.
Before the debate, Gaventa asks the audience to
show if they believe that London needs more tall buildings – and estimates
about 70% raise their hands in favour.
Large audience inside Peacock Theatre for London tall towers debate © London Intelligence 2014 |
In favour
Paul Finch, programme director of the World
Architecture Festival – described by Gaventa as ‘the godfather of architectural
publishing’ – speaks in favour. “This is a hot topic for Londoners,” begins
Finch. “We should be thinking about what is appropriate tallness for different
parts of London. And, if we build an average of one new tall building in each
London borough per year, that would give us 330 over ten years – and we’ve 200
in the pipeline already.”
Finch suggests every London borough – each bigger
than most English provincial cities – remains perfectly capable of finding a
suitable site for a tall building.
Tall purpose
Finch says tall buildings are a necessary part of
London’s response as a “global trading city” to international markets. For
instance, one of London’s latest tall buildings in Leadenhall, ‘The
Cheesegrater’, (224m, 736ft high) provides a global home for insurance giant
Aon.
Another insurance global player, WR Berkley, are
moving to the 38-storey ‘Scalpel’ tower (190m, 620ft tall) at Lime Street in
the City of London.
“That company operates from a mid-rise in Boston
but they wanted a tower and London provided it,” says Finch. “As Prince Charles
might say, ‘don’t spit on your luck’.”
Sprawl prevention
Finch also argues tall buildings will help London’s
development “avoid an inevitable sprawl into its Green Belt”.
He contends unprecedented housing demand in London
“requires us to use every arrow in our supply quiver and that includes tall
buildings”.
Tall buildings are part of the solution to housing
demand in tandem with low rise and medium density developments, says Finch.
Overseas investors
Finch berates people who claim too many towers are
built for overseas investors who don’t live in London. “If we don’t build
towers to meet that demand, then those investors will buy existing stock and
make the housing shortage even worse,” says Finch.
London is a city undergoing radical demographic and
ethnographic change – as well as physical change – and Finch says: “We worry
about alien forms, intrusive interlopers and changed city character – but do we
really want architectural policies that sound as if they’ve been drafted by
UKIP.”*
Finch reaches the summit of his argument, saying:
“We should embrace a wave of new construction that improves our urban landscape
and uses some of the financial gain that towers generate for public purposes.
Support the motion.
Onward and upward.”
Against
Sir Simon Jenkins, journalist and National Trust
chair, reputedly dislikes skyscrapers and wind turbines. “I think the Strata
Tower** at the Elephant and Castle particularly annoys him,” says Gaventa,
introducing Jenkins.
“I shamelessly love London and its evolution,”
begins Jenkins. “Nobody ever told us in the last fifteen years that we’d have
more than 300 tall buildings in London. The Mayor of London’s policy on tall
buildings is pure whim. And there’s no policy document on where tall buildings
should go.”
Jenkins says towers now “pepper pot” London rather
than rise in clusters in the City of London or at Canary Wharf. “The Walkie
Talkie slid down the hill from the City,” says Jenkins. “There’ll be a canyon
of towers along the Thames.”
Secret conversation
Jenkins says Londoners were kept in the dark about
the recent very tall outcrop, including The Shard. “They happened after secret
conversations between developers, architects and politicians,” argues Jenkins.
“Each tower slides through without reference to any overall plan. This wouldn’t
have happened in any other city.”
Jenkins disputes the need for more tall buildings.
Eighty per cent of proposed towers are for luxury flats. “We need luxury flats
in London like we need a plague,” says Jenkins.
High-density low rise
Tall buildings go up in London with foreign money
for speculative investment. “None have any civic significance,” he adds. “Their
offices are not popular. The Gherkin has gone bankrupt. As did Canary Wharf at
one stage. The Shard is proving difficult to occupy.”
Jenkins says London desperately needs more
high-density but low-rise housing. “But most of these high rise flats are sold
off-plan to overseas investors. As a desperate gesture of a locality to the
Mayor of London, the developers of the new tower blocks at Battersea pledged
buyers would have to come to London to sign the lease!
“Tall buildings aren’t needed. They’re inefficient
and highly expensive to maintain. Honest architects say they’re stuffed full of
lifts and deteriorate quickly.
“Tall buildings are alien. They make London look
like Dubai. In two hundred years time, people will look back at us and ask ‘why
did they put up these strange and mostly unoccupied tall buildings?’
“Oppose the motion. Vote for low-rise.”
Context: The majority of 230 new towers – buildings with
over 20 storeys - in London’s planning pipeline are residential, according to
GL Hearn and NLA research.
London has seen a surge in tall buildings since
2000 when ‘The Gherkin’ gained planning permission. The Shard opened in 2012.
The Leadenhall Building (‘The Cheesegrater’) and 20 Fenchurch Street (‘Walkie
Talkie’) are due to open in 2014.
*UKIP = United Kingdom Independence Party, a rising
right-wing political force with an anti-immigration stance.
**The Strata Tower in Elephant and Castle, approved
by the London Borough of Southwark and the Mayor of London, is home to 399
apartments in a 43-storey, 148m-high building, part of the Strata SE1 luxury
residential development completed in summer 2010.
Does London Need More Tall Buildings? A keynote public debate at the Peacock
Theatre in Portugal Street, Holborn, part of the 2014 London Festival of Architecture (1-30 June), organised by the London School of Economics, New
London Architecture and the Centre for London - and chaired by Sarah Gaventa.
Paul Coleman, London Intelligence, June 2014
1 comment:
Great post! I couldn't get a ticket so this is an amazing find. Thank you so much for sharing!
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